Bolivia part 1: La Paz

Wow, mom! I have never been higher before than I was in Bolivia! (Hahaha...at one point I was almost 16,000ft above sea level.)

Flying into La Paz was strange. The city is so high that the airplane hardly has to descend to land. The city is probably the most dramatically-located in the world; it fills an entire canyon from floor to rim, and spills over the edges out onto the altiplano. When you're standing at the top of the canyon, you're much higher than the tallest skyscrapers down below. At night, down in the canyon, the lights of the buildings going up the sides meet the stars in the sky. It is really a surreal setting for a very mystical city.

My first day in La Paz was spent taking it easy in order to avoid the malaise of altitude sickness. I think that the pills I took helped a lot, but I still got a headache. I lay down to take a nap and experienced a strange sensation; it was almost like I was suffocating very slowly. I felt better after the nap and the mug of coca tea that Mauricio's mom gave me. It had real coca leaves in it, which was kind of exciting. Please note that coca leaves do not produce the same high that cocaine does. The leaves must go through a very complicated chemical process before they are turned into cocaine.

La Paz is, of course, the capital of Bolivia. However, the actual capital as defined by the constitution is Sucre, a city located elsewhere in Bolivia. Naturally this presents a unique situation: the legislature and the president's offices are in La Paz, while the judicial branch of the government is in Sucre. Lately there has been talk of uniting all the branches of government in Sucre, thereby stripping La Paz of its unofficial status as capital of Bolivia. Mauricio thinks that this is a ploy by the government in order to divert people's attentions from the many problems facing Bolivia that are not being solved. During my time there, a cabildo, or open-air town meeting, was called. Over 1 million residents of La Paz took to the streets (peacefully) to show their determination to keep the government in La Paz. Everywhere you looked, you could see signs and banners proclaiming "¡La sede no se mueve!" ("The seat of government won't move!")

I really liked the indigenous presence in La Paz. Many Aymara women still wear traditional dress, which is patterned after the dress of the noblewomen of the Spanish city of Toledo in the 1700s. Their outfits include a pollera, which is a billowing skirt usually of bright colors, a big shawl, braided hair, and a bowler hat. They often have a big strip of fabric slung over the shoulders and back which they use to carry things in, such as groceries or even small children.

La Paz has a very distinctive energy to it. Maybe it's the thin air and intense sunshine of the high altitude, or maybe it's the indigenous influence. Whatever it is, I find it very easy to use the adjective "mystical" when referring to the city.